


an effigy never sleeps

by unthank



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Cloud City (Star Wars), Gen, Internal Conflict, POV Darth Vader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29556798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unthank/pseuds/unthank
Summary: in cloud city, vader wakes up
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	an effigy never sleeps

**Author's Note:**

> [unrest is in the soul, we don't move our bodies anymore](https://open.spotify.com/track/0TlBuH1azntROo6SCNe3Kb?si=ayD5xLNKTPCKvXhM87MYrA)
> 
> cw: mentions of fire, burning, amputation in battle

If Cloud City was a place of beauty and new found hope, Vader wasn’t sure he was meant to see it.

He didn’t see it because of a plan he constructed himself, he knew. He’d sent the glowing light of the city running as far as it could — pinks and pale golds traded for the harsh black graphite he preferred to surround himself with. Gone was the softness that Calrissian bargained to preserve. Here was the cold and shadow that Vader resided in. It’d been more than a long time since he’d lived in anything else.

It was cold and it was dark, bitterness bit at his hands, almost as if he was still made from the body his mother gave birth to. _Now wasn’t the time to think on that_. Now was never the time.

He stepped through the smoke and frozen gas, ignoring the gasps that echoed from his mouth and the sharp way his boots hit the metal beneath him. He’d gotten good at ignoring what existed. The dark side was colder, number than the Jedi had ever told him. It was easier to fall into the void and let it consume him than think of anything he might’ve done differently; it was easier to do as he was told.

There was a boy in front of him — scattered and desperate. His Lord had told him this was Anakin’s son, _his son_ , the last remaining piece of hope the Jedi had to hold onto. He was running and holding onto a lightsaber, wielding it with the untrained confidence of a padawan learner. 

And it called to him, it did, that lightsaber. He could feel it sing out to him and he didn’t want to remember why. It hummed and shivered in the boy’s hands, familiar and unfamiliar, friend and foe.

The boy brandished it like a staggering fawn, still unused to the weight and threat of death in his yet untrained hands. Vader remembered that well. He remembered when he, too, could barely strike with the lightsaber given to him by his old master. He’d been younger than his son, unsteady and desperate to prove that he could be just as strong as the man teaching him; he wouldn’t be the disappointment the council were determined to say he was. 

His master — he dare not say his name — had pushed him, trained him, taught him to be better than the old masters above them. Maybe his teaching had proved too fruitful.

⋆⋆⋆

_“It’s all thanks to your training, master,” he remembered saying._

_His master had smiled at him back then, all fondness and care. He’d never looked at him with anything other than love._

⋆⋆⋆

But still, that lightsaber. It hissed in the back of Vader’s head, thrummed between the glass-wire tension that made his artificial voice and tremored in his frightened son’s hand. He wanted to reach out, take it. He wanted to feel the cool, smooth surface in the palm of his hand once more. He wanted—

What was he saying?

The blade in his hand was as red as his living heart and moved forward, fast, slashed at the hopeful blue that tried to blind him. The boy in front of him screamed— wailed. Everything was red to Vader now; the acrid burn of his son’s loss, his own weapon in his line of sight, the fire that threatened to burnt beneath his ice cold skin. He’d silenced it, he had, the very thing that tried to sing him home. 

The boy clutched at his wounded arm, reached for Vader yet ran from him. He smelt like fear to Vader’s predator, a hunted rabbit-boy in the face of a monster that ate sweetness as if it was nothing. His thoughts betrayed his fear too, gave up his longing for something, anything that wasn’t the near death that followed him.

⋆⋆⋆

_It’s a similar, zinging pain. Vader remembered it well after he lost his first arm, bitter and defeated by a man who taught the very one that found him. He swore then that teaching the next generation would be Dooku’s very undoing._

⋆⋆⋆

Why was I never told about you? He wanted to say.

“What do you know of your father?” He said instead.

The boy looked up at him then, rage and hatred in his still blue eyes. His mouth curled into a snarl and teeth bared.

“You _killed_ him!” He shouted. His voice was hoarse.

⋆⋆⋆

_When he’d been not much older, Vader had felt the same sort of anger. He’d lain there, split apart and burning, fire beginning to lick at the severed wounds graced to him by the man he saw as the only father he’d ever known._

_“Master!” He’d already cried. “Master, help me!”_

_It hadn’t taken his gut yet. Hatred hadn’t taken root in the pit of his empty stomach. He didn’t want this, he didn’t. He wanted to go home and sit in every bit of quiet the temple offered, he wanted to find Ahsoka and Padme and try, as much as he could, to fix whatever was broken. He didn’t want to be consumed by the fire of the dark side._

_“Please!” He cried again, reached out towards his master._

_Let him go back to the cool, blue lake._

⋆⋆⋆

“That’s what you were told, hm?” Vader hissed, felt his voice box crack trying not to shout, not to cry. “ _I_ am your father.”

He hadn’t meant to tell the boy like this. In all his careful plans and conniving, better than he had created before, he’d fallen at the first hurdle — spilled his words like the boyish knight he used to be. He was still impatient, still impulsive, still ruled by his own personal feelings; his new lord would be sure to punish him well for this. 

It wasn’t the time to remember the boy he used to be. It was never the time to fall into the memory of what he could’ve been.

But Vader could see himself in Luke. He saw himself in the way he clung to the metal beside him, afraid and hurting, wounded arm blistering and sore. Vader was sure he could smell the rotten burn inside his own suit; he was certain it was he who was burning instead. 

“No!” The boy screamed— wailed— fear and anger glimmered gold in his lakeside eyes. 

And Vader wanted to reach out, he wanted to touch that blue, Naboo water and take his son back to the world where they both belonged.

“You know it to be true,” is all he could say.

⋆⋆⋆

_ “You’re evil, Anakin,” he remembered his master saying. “I can no longer help you.” _

_ If he didn’t know better he’d think his master had cried, but how could a man who half-killed him so easily cry over his imminent death? He’d die here, Vader was sure of it. He’d die here with every regret in the world burning its way through his war-torn body, building itself into a fearsome rage. _

_ “I hate you!” he shouted. He meant it. He did. _

_ He could only ever hate the man who claimed, falsely, untruthfully, to be his brother. No family would leave you to be so engulfed in agony.  _

_ Hate made his agony weep. _

⋆⋆⋆

Luke looked at him one last time, gold no longer glistening behind pure blue. He looked at him steadily, held Vader’s gaze for a moment that lasted an infinity — and he dropped.

It was a long drop, a deep pit that fell to the sky below and Vader was so sure his son would die before any impact took hold of his weakened body. There was a gush of wind and an old fear gripped the pit of his stomach, tightened itself and choked him; he was going to lose it all again.

But a warm whisper and gentle touch against the skin he’d almost forgotten eased him down, brought him back. Carefully, Vader listened. The Force around him telling him his son was safe, he was okay, he’d live to breathe and fight another battle; be it with him or against him, whichever way Vader chose to walk.

Whichever way his own gold could take him, to the lake, to the fire, to far away from whatever it is he was supposed to be.

ARE YOU READY TO WAKE? OR WILL YOU KEEP ON BURNING?

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first star wars fic i've written since i was 13, and the first i've ever put out for other people to read, so i'm just a little bit nervous.
> 
> anakin skywalker has been my favourite character for years now. there's something about him that makes him fascinatingly conflicted, his past and his future haven't always been his, and i wanted to give him his own thoughts and choices to make. so that's what this fic is — a crossroads for vader to make the choice to become anakin again and be the father luke craves, or fall down deeper into the man palpatine created.
> 
> this is also a fic about how anakin's rejected of obi-wan is reflected years later when luke rejects him. though both situations are different, both mirror each other in fascinating ways. i could talk about this for a while, but perhaps the end notes of an ao3 fic isn't entirely the place for it.
> 
> thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed <3
> 
> [twitter @kuguken](https://twitter.com/kuguken)
> 
> [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/heresy)


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